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Monday, 4 February 2013

Rathbone - The Time Travelling Sherlock Holmes

The Sherlock Holmes films of Basil Rathbone began, as many
know, set firmly in the Victorian era. Beginning with The Hound of the Baskervilles and followed by The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes they presented us with an image
of Victorian England that was familiar to all even if it was one filtered through
the eyes of Hollywood.

After these two films the franchise was taken over by
Universal who, as is well known, moved the films some forty years forward in time
so that they were set during the Second World War (even though the film may
have had nothing to do with said war).

However, the studio appeared to go out of its way to
preserve something of the Victorian era; an attempt to keep one part of Holmes’s
world in its original chronological place.

Take a look at these two pictures taken from The Hound of the Baskevilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – both
Victorian set.

Hound (left) Adventures (right) - click to enlarge

Now take a look at these images taken from the Universal
series.

Dressed to Kill

The House of Fear

The Woman in Green

Little changes have taken place in the sense that oil/gas
lamps have been replaced by electric ones but, aside from this, there is a very
Victorian feel about 221B in the Universal films. The studio may have
felt bold enough to modernise the world outside of 221B but it was not
so brave that it felt it could mess with Holmes’s inner world.

It was almost like Holmes had his own Tardis that remained
the same inside regardless of what the world outside looked like. The one fixed point in a changing age perhaps?